I flew home to the motherland for my uncle’s wedding this weekend. An outstanding time was had by all (despite Southwest’s tardiness and the rental car agency’s sick sense of humor. To wit: well, if your flight lands too late to pick up the car by 11 pm, when we close, you can just get it tomorrow at six am! Problem solved! Oh, wait, you still have to drive over an hour to said wedding? And the airport closes, so you can’t actually sleep there?). Also, I overcame my usual stoic wedding self and actually teared up thanks to the following, read at the start of the ceremony. Enjoy. And congratulations to the new couple–so happy for you both!
Excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but Really loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”